May 27, 2018 (Job 19:25-27 & Acts 9:1-6) – “Seeing God Through Another’s Eyes” by Chelsea Page

Can our loved ones rise again? Can they reappear to us? Jesus did.

In our Bible story today, Jesus has left earth and ascended into heaven, but he comes back to appear to Saul. It is such a dramatic appearance that it changes Saul’s life completely, and he becomes the apostle Paul. Let me continue reading from Acts: The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything. (9:7-8)

Paul actually counted himself as one of the witnesses of Jesus’s resurrection, along with the original disciples like Peter. He later wrote, “Last of all, as to one born too late, Christ appeared also to me.” (1 Cor. 15:5-8) But he was wrong. He was not the last one Christ appeared to.

If you continue reading Acts, you see that a disciple in Damascus Syria named Ananias, whom no one ever hears about, actually has that honor. Jesus appeared to Ananias in a vision and said, “You must be the eyes of Saul, whom I have blinded. I have told him that you will go to him and restore his sight. Now go.” Ananias went and did as he was asked, and found Saul in a humble, blinded state, unable to make sense of what had happened to him.

When Ananias finds Paul, he says to him, ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know God’s will, to see the Righteous One and to hear God’s own voice; for you will be God’s witness to all the world of what you have seen and heard.’ (22:12-15)

Yes, Paul may have seen Christ himself, but he needed Ananias to make sense of it for him, to turn his vision into something he could use, something that gave him a new identity so that he could get up and continue. In so doing Ananias touched and changed Paul’s life just as much as Jesus did. Yet he is often overlooked. How many of you ever heard of Ananias as one of the witnesses of the risen Lord? No wonder; he appears nowhere outside the book of Acts.

Friends, not many of us have the privilege of having Christ appear to us in a vision. And for most of us, our loved ones do not reappear to us in this life. They are gone, until we meet again. We feel their absence painfully. No one can represent God’s goodness to us in quite the same way as they did. But God sends us others in this life, who can console us by showing us the presence of Christ in their own way, and help us to realize what we CAN still see.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank many of you for showing me Christ during my time serving with you this year. In our short time together, you have affected me deeply. Without even knowing it, you have invited me to perceive the presence of the Holy where I had never seen it before. I now know how to look for Christ in the figure of a woman pouring tea at coffee hour; in two old men leaning forward and almost touching heads in order to hear each other; in a three-year-old child running up a church aisle; in flowers whisked from garden to hand to vase to altar; in a tall talkative pastor bowed silent before yet another loss. This is knowledge that I now own, to take with me wherever I go. I’m not leaving Parkview for another few months, but I’m about to go into an intense term of ministry in the trauma center at UC Davis Medical Center as part of my pastor training. I know that it’s the memories of beauty and goodness that you have shown me at Parkview that will sustain me during this difficult time.

In the book of Job, during his loneliest time of suffering and abandonment, Job is able to say, “I know that my redeemer lives, and in my flesh I will see God.” Friends, Jesus lives, and God provides those of us who are still living to help us see him. This Memorial Day, as you honor your loved ones, remember that just as they showed you Christ, you too show Christ to others. Amen.